


Let’s play doctor. (But not like that.)

by AdeleDazeem



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Getting Together, Post-Movie, Pre-Relationship, but no one is really seriously hurt don't worry, getting sick but also:, hurt-comfort fic, it's soft y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 21:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17108555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdeleDazeem/pseuds/AdeleDazeem
Summary: Kim is sick. And a bit of a diva. Thank god Trini knows how to handle a little drama.





	Let’s play doctor. (But not like that.)

**Author's Note:**

> I was sick last week, so here is Kim getting the TLC I was craving.

“This is such bullshit,” Kim groans.

“Actually,” Trini corrects, readjusting Kim’s arm around her shoulder so she can carry more of her weight easier, “I’m pretty sure it’s the flu.”

After sneezing and coughing for the better part of the morning, Jason finally had to send Kim home early from Ranger practice. Kim had argued for all of five seconds before doubling over in a coughing fit.

“Fine, “ she had muttered through clenched teeth as she clutched her ribs. “But this doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re too scared to face me one-on-one in the pit.” The threat had been slightly less intimidating given her wheezing.

“Oooo-kay, then,” Trini had stepped up and wrapped an arm around Kim’s waist and led her back to the entrance. “Let’s save the trash talk for when you don’t sound like you have a punctured lung, hey?”

“Get some rest!” Jason yelled at their retreating forms.

“That’s an order,” Zack added grinning. “No late night shenanigans, you two.”

Kim had still been trying to catch her breath from her outburst, apparently too distracted by sucking air in through her clogged nose to respond, leaving Trini to answer for the both of them.

“Yeah, yeah,” she shoots Zack the finger over her shoulder before turning it into a less incendiary wave goodbye to the other two boys. “Plenty of fluids, lots of blankets, yada yada, we got it.”

She can just hear Billy asking Zack what he means by ‘late night shenanigans’ as their heads pass underwater.

Thankfully, it’s unseasonably warm out, so Trini doesn’t have to worry too much over Kim getting even more sick as they trudge back to town in their soggy clothes. Trini still pulls the other girl closer to her body. Better to be safe than sorry.

“This would be so much easier if I could just carry you,” Trini grunts as Kim sags away from her a few minutes later. The skin of Kim’s arm feels clammy against the back of her neck.

“Yeah, that wouldn’t look suspicious,” Kim scoffs then coughs. When she regains her breath, she says, “The first cop who saw you fireman carrying me like some warzone casualty would rush us to the hospital. And then what? We don’t even know how these Power Coins have affected our biology.”

“Then stop taking such long steps, you giant beanstalk. I’m trying to walk, not long jump over here.”

Kim chuckles and adjusts her gait. It’s a little awkward, but they make it work.

\---

“How can we even get sick?” Kim mutters as they round the corner onto her street. “Doesn’t seem fair, if we’re being honest. We saved the world. Seems like we should get a pass on getting the flu.”

“Well that’s viruses for you,” Trini says. “Totally inconsiderate.”

As they approach Kim’s two-storey, Trini peers around nervously. Kim trudges on without a second thought. “What are you gonna say to your parents?” Trini asks as they step onto the front porch.

“Nothing,” Kim replies, unlocking the big wooden door and all but falling into the house. “Dad’s on a business trip. Mom flew out last night to surprise him. They won’t be back ‘til tomorrow some time.”

“Huh,” Trini says thoughtfully.

“What?”

“So the perfect family thing really _is_  real.”

“Shut up and bring me to the couch. My head feels like it weighs fifty pounds.”

“More like seventy,” Trini says as she deposits Kim onto the cushions.

Kim flops across the couch, boneless. She sighs dramatically the whole way.

Trini scratches the back of her neck. “So your parents won’t be back until tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Kim slurs, face smushed into the back cushion of the couch.

Trini thinks for a second longer then says, “Ok,” and pulls out her phone. She scrolls through her Favorites and clicks on her mom’s picture. Her mom picks up on the second ring.

“Trini!” She greets loudly. “Is everything alright?”

“Hey, Mom, yes, yes. Of course. Everything’s fine,” Trini reassures her mom, trying to keep the eye roll from her voice. “I was just wondering if I could stay over at a friend’s house tonight.”

Her mother pauses to tell her little brother to shush for a moment. “I don’t know, Trini. What is this _friend_ ’s name?”

“Zack,” Trini lies easily. “His mom said it would be ok. As long as he sleeps on the couch, of course.”

“Oh,” her mother’s tone lightens noticeably. “Zack, you say? That’s perfectly fine, honey. Just make sure to be back in time for mass in the morning.”

When she hangs up, Kim has rolled over onto her back to look at her. “Zack, huh?” she asks. Now that she’s laying down, Trini can see how exhausted she actually is. Her eyes are nearing bloodshot. The smirk looks strained cut across her pale skin. “You got big plans once you’re done tending to poor pitiful me?”

“So you admit you’re pretty pitiful now?” Trini snorts. She grabs a blanket off the back of the loveseat and drapes it over Kim’s thin shoulders. “My mom would rather get drunk off communion wine before she let me stay over at a girl’s house.”

“But a boy’s house is ok?”

“I think she’s halfway hoping I’ll get pregnant or something.”

Kim shudders. “God. The thought of you having sex with Zack. Or really, _anyone_  having sex with him actually.” She gags.

Trini chuckles, “Tell that to Jason.”

“What?” Kim asks, scrunching her eyebrows.

Trini just looks at her.

There’s a long silence and then Kim’s eyebrows climb to her hairline. “ _No_.”

Trini just shrugs. “Have you not seen the way Jason looks at Zack when he pins him during sparring practice? It’s like Christmas came early.”

“If I wasn’t sick before, I definitely am now.”

\---

“Kim. Get up.”

“Nooooo,” Kim moaned, clutching the couch like a lifeline.

“Did you forget what I said earlier about me carrying you?”

“Didn’t forget,” comes the muffled reply from the pillow. “Didn’t _care_.”

“Kim,” Trini intones. Her hands are on her hips, but the intimidating posture has little effect when it’s intended target is face first in a couch. “You have to get out of those wet clothes. Laying around in them in this air conditioning is only going to make you sicker.”

Kim makes a grunt.

“You have to the count of three and then I’m caveman-handling your ass up the stairs.”

“Wouldn’t it be cave _woman_ -handling?”

“ _One_ \--.“

“ _Fine_.” Kim huffs, rolling over and smacking Trini in the stomach with the pillow she had been cuddling. She moves to her feet but sways forward dangerously as soon as she’s vertical.

“Shit, Kim,” Trini breathes, reaching out and catching the woozy girl against her body. “ _And_  you’re shivering, you dumbass.”

Trini makes a move to swing Kim up into a bridal carry, made easy by their Ranger strength, but Kim stops hers. “I’m sick. Not a corpse. I can walk myself, thank you.”

Upstairs, Kim flings her closet open and proceeds to toss half its content onto her bedroom floor in her quest for a very specific hoodie.

“Must be some sweatshirt,” Trini muses, dodging a pair of neon pink Soffe shorts.

“It is,” Kim says emphatically as she rifles through various other perfectly acceptable lounge clothes. When she finally finds it, under what Trini estimates are eighteen pairs of tank tops, Kim hugs it tightly to her chest.

“It’s…” Trini starts, staring at the article of clothing when Kim holds it out to marvel at.

“Perfect,” Kim finishes before picking up a random pair of sweatpants from the floor. She tosses another pair at Trini for her to wear.

“Is that Goofy?” Trini asks, peering around Kim to get a better look.

“And his son Max. And the biggest rock star in the universe.”

“Prince?”

“ _No._ ” Kim glares at Trini. Trini holds up her hands in surrender. “Powerline,” she corrects.

Kim turns towards her dresser then, so rather than ask questions, Trini picks up the first shirt she sees and heads out of the room. Kim is already peeling off her damp tank top as she closes the door behind herself. Trini keeps her eyes on her hand on the doorknob as she pulls it to, not the expanse of tan skin being revealed further into the room.

She hooks a left into the first open door and shakes the unwanted image from her head. Kim is her friend. Her sick friend. Her sick, _straight_  friend. Trini is here to take care of her sick straight friend. Not perve on her while she’s unaware. She rips her wet shirt off so forcefully she tears a sleeve.

She stares at the crumpled ball of now useless fabric in her hand before raising it to whack herself repeatedly in the forehead. Now is not the time to be losing her cool, she reminds herself as she hears Kim coughing from the room across the hall.

She gets dressed quickly, thankfully with zero damage to the clothes she has borrowed from Kim, and hangs her wet pants up to dry. She waits in the hall for Kim to finish and idly wonders when the last time was that Kim had a sleepover that wasn’t around a campfire with the other Rangers.

Kim appears in the doorway to her room with her hood up, a pair of baggie pink sweatpants slung across her hips. She looks absolutely adorable if Trini is honest with herself. She shoves that thought out of her mind as Kim wipes her nose with the cuff of her battered grey hoodie.

“Medicine?” Trini asks. Kim shows her to the veritable over-the-counter pharmacy in her parent’s medicine cabinet. Trini whistles. “It looks like a CVS threw up in here.”

“If it did, we probably have the antidote for it in here,” Kim says, reaching straight for the Nyquil. Trini grabs another bottle and some cough drops. Expectorants for the daytime. Suppressants for the night. Fever reducers for both.

“I think we should be good?” Trini asks as they carry their haul back to Kim’s ensuite bathroom and lay the bottles out on the counter.

Kim knocks back a dose of Nyquil, dry, and says, “Good God in heaven I hope so.”

\---

They’ve finally agreed on what to watch. An endeavor that was surprisingly difficult given that one-half of the parties initially seemed to be circling unconsciousness. For someone who barely managed walking in a straight line on the way back from the quarry, she was surprisingly lucid when it came to picking a movie on Netflix.

“You’re going to fall asleep fifteen seconds in, why do you even care?”

“Just because my eyes are closed, doesn’t mean I can’t hear what’s happening.”

“Fine. But we are not watching that monstrosity of an adaptation. The trailer made _me_  want to float face down in a swimming pool.”

“The Great Gatsby is a literary icon.”

“Keyword: literary. The book is fine, but who wants to watch Leonardo Dicaprio bathed in gaudy CGI-ed glamour for two hours.”

“You have no taste, Trini Kwan. None. Totally tasteless you are.”

“If you wanna watch Leo and some CGI, so bad then _here_.” She types in her search result and clicks on the movie.

Kim leans forward and crows. “Who knew the bad girl was into romance movies!”

“Titanic is a classic,” Trini says shortly.

“Wow, the boys are never going to believe this. Your street cred just plumme--”

“Shut up, or I’m turning it back to Love It or List It.”

Kim shows Trini how she feels about that option by blowing her nose into a kleenex. Loudly.

\---

Jack is just winning his poker game when Trini pauses the movie and moves from the love seat to joins Kim on the couch.

“Budge up,” Trini tells her, prodding her legs. Kim does as she’s told even as she looks at the other girl confused. “Between the music and your teeth chattering I couldn’t hear any of the fucking dialogue,” Trini explains, laying Kim’s legs out over her lap and taking care to tuck the blanket under her feet.

“My teeth were not chattering,” Kim complains.

Trini starts rubbing Kim’s legs and feet over the top of the blankets, trying to spread her heat. “Yeah. They were. Almost as bad as Rose and Jack at the end,” she says. “You’re shivering even now. Do you want me to get you another blanket from somewhere?”

Kim shakes her head and pulls the drawstrings on her hood tighter. “No,” she replies, scrunching further into the couch. As a result, she ends up slinking more into Trini’s lap. “You’re like a furnace. I’ll be good now.”

“You sure?” Trini asks, looking at Kim’s face for any telltale sign of added discomfort.

“Yes. Now start the movie again, damnit,” Kim says even though her eyes are firmly shut and her head is now tipped towards the back of the couch.

\---

By the time the credits roll, Kim is fast asleep. They’ve maneuvered themselves so that Trini wedged between the arm of the couch and the back, with Kim curled around her seated form, basically in her lap. Kim has transformed herself into a tiny ball of blankets and sweatsuits.

Trini keeps her arm slung around Kim’s back as she leans sideways carefully to get the remote she’d left at the other end of the couch. Trini has finally gone slack in her arms, no more shivers or coughs, and she will be damned if she ruins this girl’s much-needed rest now. Her fingers are just bumping the plastic edge of the remote when Kim stirs. Trini freezes.

“Warm,” Kim mumbles contentedly against Trini’s chest. Her hood has been pushed back a little and her fingers are curled half in the blankets, half in the extra fabric of Trini’s shirt.

And it’s not cute. It really isn’t. Trini can feel a damp spot growing on her tee where Kim’s been resting, no doubt from drool since Kim’s been a mouth breather since her nose stopped up on the way home. Trini can just _feel_  all the germs Kim is exhaling with each breath.

And yet.

Kim huddles a little closer, and Trini will be damned if she doesn’t feel her dumb, dumb, dumb heart give a little flutter in response to Kim gripping more fully onto her shirt, nuzzling into her. This, she is sure, is what Janice Ian meant when she said: “too gay to function.”

Rather than dwell on the surprisingly enjoyable feeling of Kim encasing her in a cloud of germs, Trini decides it’s time for bed. From their position, it is incredibly easy to heft Kim up in a bridal style and carry her up the stairs. Thankfully, Kim is still asleep and doesn’t complain about the indignities of being carried. Trini settles her into bed with zero fuss, Kim still breathing deeply, if a little wheezily, as she tucks the quilt over the top of her.

\---

Even though Kim insisted earlier that Trini sleep down the hall in the guest room so Kim won’t disturb her, Trini is still woken up in the middle of the night by Kim’s coughing. Horrible hacking coughs that make Trini’s chest hurt in sympathy. She throws her blankets back, rubs her eyes, and goes to Kim.

She is curled up on her side, back to Trini when she opens her door. Trini grabs the glass of water from the nightstand and moves around the bed. She drops to her knees in front of the miserable sounding girl. Kim’s skin is feverish when Trini pushes her hair back from her face. She’s knocked her hood off in her sleep, it appears.

“Shit,” Kim’s eyes look blearily up at her at the contact. Her voice is strained and Trini can tell she isn’t getting a full breath in as she asks, “Did I wake you up?”

“Here, drink some water,” Trini says instead of answering and holds the glass up for Kim to take.

Kim sits up gingerly and sips at the water for a moment before she is overcome with another chest-cracking round of coughs. Trini grabs the glass back quickly to avoid any spills as Kim curls up tighter on her side and coughs into the inside of her sweatshirt. She slumps into the mattress exhausted when it abates.

“Do you think it’s time to take more NyQuil?” she asks feebly, mouth still covered by her sweatshirt. Trini presses the home button on Kim’s phone laying on the bed. Both girls recoil at the brightness of the display. It’s 4:24. Well past the six-hour dosage limit.

Trini nods her head as she hops up. “Yeah,” Trini says and jogs into Kim’s adjoining bathroom to get some more water and the bottle of medicine on the basin.

When she comes back, Kim has flopped on her back, hand thrown over her eyes. Trini lifts her knee onto the bed and shuffles into the empty space next to her. She keeps a hand on Kim’s back as she throws back the two pills and some more water. It’s ostensibly to steady her, but when Kim leans over to set the water on the floor next to the bed, Trini doesn’t remove her hand.

“Thank you,” Kim says as earnestly as one can, when a little out of breath, as she curls back onto her side, body facing Trini. She’s looking up at Trini from under the nest of dark hair and Trini’s rubbing circles into the warmth of her back and then Kim leans forward just a bit more. She presses a kiss to the pajama-clad bend of Trini’s knee.

Trini feels like she’s the one whose lungs are revolting now.

Thankfully, Kim’s eyes are closed when she pulls back and rests her cheek to the spot that Trini’s brain is now intimately aware of. Trini focuses on rubbing the other girl’s back rather than how long her lashes are against her cheek.

“God, I feel so pathetic.”

“You look pretty pathetic too.”

Kim gives her thigh a little headbutt before settling back in. “Ass,” she says.

“Do you want a cough drop or anything?” Trini asks quietly.

Kim shakes her head against Trini’s knee. She has her sleeves pulled down over her palms, fingers curled over the edges as she presses her hands into her chest. Trini has seen Kim punch a hole into a car door before, but right now, she just looks so small and fragile Trini’s concerned any cough might splinter her.

“You should go get some sleep,” Kim says, eyes closed like she’s trying to do the same.

“Right back at you,” Trini says, looking down at her in the dark. Her face is in shadows, but she can still see the divot crunched between her eyebrows. Dark hair a mess against the light of her sheets. The hood of her sweatshirt twisted up behind her, a strangle hazard waiting to happen. “Do you want me to leave?”

Kim opens her eyes but keeps them on the fabric of Trini’s pajama bottoms in front of her. She hesitates then says. “What I want is to not keep you up all night.”

Then, as if on cue, Kim coughs again and Trini can feel it through her heaving back. She knows it’s just the flu, that Kim’s heightened cell reproduction or whatever it is that helps them heal should have her right as rain quicker than a regular human, but still. As she feels the girl’s ragged breaths through her palm, it breaks Trini’s heart. It’s decided then.

Trini rolls under the covers with only the smallest whine from Kim at the jostling movement. She bunches up the pillow behind her and leans back against Kim’s headboard - a place she never thought she’d find herself. She straightens her legs out in front of her and motions for Kim to move closer. Kim is hesitant so Trini rolls her eyes and gently arranges their limbs so Kim’s head is resting on her chest and Trini’s arms are wrapped around her back, keeping her close.

“I had asthma when I was younger,” Trini explains softly, rubbing a hand up and down Kim’s back again. “I grew out of it in elementary school, but before that, sometimes I’d have an attack at night and couldn’t sleep. We had this hideous overstuffed chair in our living room. Pink and white stripes. Not unlike this bedspread, actually.” Kim makes paws at her stomach disapprovingly. Trini chuckles, “Real eighties. Absolutely horrible. And my mom would sit up with me all night in it, just like this. It was the only thing that helped until the nebulizer meds kicked in and I could breathe again.”

Kim is quiet for so long after Trini finishes, she thinks she’s fallen back asleep. So she’s surprised to look down and see Kim’s eyes open and soft, looking up at her. The intimacy of it is tempered by the fact that she still has her sweatshirt pulled up over her nose like a bandit.

“I think that’s the kindest you’ve ever talked about your mom,” Kim says eventually.

Trini shrugs as much as their tangled position allows her to. She had meant to ease Kim into sleep, not delve into her complicated familial background. But Kim is still looking up at her and it’s dark and quiet here in this room. Safe. So it’s surprisingly easy to let her guard down enough to answer honestly. “Just because we don’t see eye to eye on most things, doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me.”

Trini can tell by the way Kim’s eyes crinkle at the edges that she’s smiling under her improvised facemask. “You know you’re really not such a tough cookie after all.”

Trini rolls her eyes. “And you’re really not such a cool kid either. Guess we’ve all had our Breakfast Club lessons now.”

Kim’s nose wrinkles just under the collar of the sweatshirt. “Is now a bad time to say that I’ve never actually seen that movie?”

Trini almost leavers them both off the bed in her surprise. “What?” she asks, equal parts shocked and appalled. Kim shakes her head, still grinning. “Wow. Well, I know what we’re watching tomorrow,” Trini says settling back against the pillows.

 

“You’ll come back, then?” Kim asks. “After mass?”

Trini realizes Kim’s gripping onto her shirt. Her hands are pulled back into the sleeves of her sweatshirt, but her fingers are wrapped ever so slightly into the soft cotton of Trini’s sleep shirt. If she were to move them anymore purposefully she’d be tickling her probably. Thankfully, Kim is either unaware of this weakness or too tired to capitalize on it.

“Unless you make a miraculous recovery between now and then,” she says. Trini’s own hand is splayed out between Kim’s shoulder blades, thumb just under the fall of her hood. When another brutal cough rips from Kim’s chest, Trini feels its genesis in her fingertips. She presses her hand fully against the shaking curves, more fully against Kim.

“I honestly think I might die,” Kim says hoarsely as she slumps more fully against her human pillow. “But hey. At least we know what to do when that happens, yeah?”

Trini chuckles and leans her head back against the headboard. Kim’s hair brushing the underside of her chin. “How many more tricks do you think Zordon has up his dot matrix sleeves?”

“We just might find out, if this gets any worse,” Kim says attempting to clear her throat of some stubborn phlegm.

“As long as I’m not late for mass.”

Kim pinches her.

\---

Trini is not late for mass. She gets home in time to shower and put on an outfit her mother deems acceptable, even. But Kim does look like death when Trini gets back to her house an hour or so later.

When she’d crawled out of bed that morning, Kim had been comatose. The only sign of life her tubaesque snoring. If she hadn’t looked so pathetic, Trini would have snapped a vid and sent it to the rest of the squad.

Now she’s sprawled on the couch, half under the pile of covers, half out. A cooking show is playing on the tv, but Kim has a pillow pulled over the top of her head in addition to her hood. Trini hears a muffled groan as she enters the living room.

“How ya doin’, hot stuff?” Trini asks as she settles onto the arm of the couch.

“Hot. And cold. And then hot again,” Kim responds, kicking her blankets off with a wild foot. She shivers and then shoves her bare foot back under the balled up blanket. She throws her pillow off her face and onto the floor in a huff. “But miserable during all of the above,” she says, twisting around on the couch, glaring at nothing in particular.

“Multi-tasking,” Trini says. “Impressive.”

Kim cuts her eyes back up at Trini, now directing her glare at her. Trini just reaches down and feels Kim’s forehead with the back of her head. Still hot, just as she imagined, given the other girl’s fever and chills. Against her better judgment, she runs her fingers through Kim’s hair. Kim lifts her chin up to angel her head more fully into Trini’s touch.

“Feels nice,” Kim mumbles, annoyance apparently now forgotten.

Trini lets her fingers continue then. “When was the last time you took some medicine?” There is a box of tissues on the coffee table, and Kim has laid out the cough drops and DayQuil accordingly.

“Time is a flat circle,” Kim says. Then, when Trini scoffs and stills her hands, she adds, “But if I must guess, probably two cooking shows ago?”

Trini nods her head even though Kim’s eyes are closed. “Time for some tea then?”

Kim’s eyes snap open as she cranes her head back to look at Trini. “And food maybe?”

Trini laughs at the hopeful look on the other girl’s face. There’s a kleenex stuck halfway in the neck of her hoodie. “Yeah,” she nods. “Learn anything useful from your cooking shows?”

Kim glares again. “Excuse me. I am the invalid here. That means _you_  cook for _me_.”

“Says who?”

“Says the army of germs currently colonizing and destroying my body.” Kim grabs a tissue from the box and wipes at her nose exaggeratedly.

"For someone supposedly so sick, you certainly are sassy this morning."

“Help me." Kim intones. "I am but a poor pitiful sickling,” she says before another blow of her nose.

“Fine,” Trini says, standing. “I’m going to the kitchen now, but only because I don’t want to be hit by any errant snot.”

\---

Kim slumps into a chair at the kitchen table. Trini doesn’t even look up from the pot on the stove. Steam is billowing around her from the soup she’s finishing up. Kim’s sense of smell is probably dampened, but Trini knows you’d have to be dead to not be affected by this heavenly olfactory assault.

“God, I could kiss you.” Kim groans, head tilted back, arms flung out, sprawled in the high back chair.

“Pass. I just watched you hack up half a lung in that last kleenex.”

“I was talking to the pho. But fine. Some lesbian you are.”

“One, it’s pronounced _fuh_  not _foe_. And two, not a lesbian.”

“Woman loving woman,” Kim waves her hand vaguely in Trini’s direction. “Have mercy on me, I am on death’s doorstep.”

“What you are, is the biggest drama queen I’ve ever seen,” Trini says as she carefully walks a steaming bowl over to the table. “My brothers aren’t even this bad when they get sick. And they’re _six_.”

Kim ignores her and instead leans over the bowl, letting the fragrant steam wash over her face. She moans, elbows resting on either side of the bowl. “I want to bathe in this stuff.”

“Kinky,” is all Trini says as she brings her own bowl over.

Kim takes a bite and burns the roof of her mouth. She keeps eating though only stopping several bites in to breathe through her mouth and say, “If i make it out of this, I’m gonna kiss you on the mouth. You beautiful angel.”

“It’s the flu, Kim, not the black plague.”

“I said what I said, damnit.”

\------

“Oh hey, Kim!” Billy greets her cheerfully when she is finally allowed back to school.

“Hey, guys.”

Zack smiles at her from where he is putting his backpack up in his locker. “Feeling better?”

“Much,” she smiles, looking past the two boys down the hallway. “Have either of you guys seen Trini yet?”

“I think she and Zack said something about getting a coffee in the--”

“Cafeteria. Got it! Thanks!” She finishes for him and strides off in the direction of the cafeteria.

She intercepts Trini and Zack as they are exiting the cafeteria and merging into the throng of students heading to homeroom.

“Kim-ay,” Zack cries when she is still several people away. “You’re back!”

She bypasses him and goes straight to Trini who is looking at her with a look that others would mistake for disinterest, but Kim knows well enough to detect a hint of happiness hidden behind that veil of indifference. She wordlessly plucks the giant styrofoam cup out of Trini’s hand and hands it to Zack.

“What?” he and Trini both begin to say. But Kim shuts them both up.

She wraps an arm around Trini’s waist and dips her over her knee, relying more on Ranger strength than skill to keep them both upright. She brings her other hand up to support Trini’s head. “I’m a woman of my word,” she says to Trini, then kisses her square on the mouth, V-E Day celebration in Times Square style. Right there in the hallway, surrounded by a good majority of their fellow Angel Grove High classmates.

Trini had made a surprised little sound as Kim bent her backward, but when their lips meet it’s like they’ve been practicing this for weeks. Trini slants her lips perfectly against Kim’s own. There’s no awkward bumping of noses or confusion of who goes left or right. Just Kim’s lips pressed surely to Trini’s plush ones and Trini’s hands in Kim’s hair.

Kim keeps it relatively PG, despite the nagging voice in the back of her mind to see how far this can go, see how this amazing feeling can only grow greater. She kisses Trini once more and restrains herself from opening her mouth to deepen it. She’s only just gotten over the flu, after all. And while she obviously wouldn't have come to school if she was contagious, swapping spit on the doorstep of that cut off period would just be downright reckless.

Dimly in the background, she becomes aware of Zack whooping and hollering. Kim pulls back and rights Trini. Her eyes are still closed as Kim brings her back to vertical. Now that they’ve parted and she is no longer distracted by the drug-like effect of Trini’s lips against her own, Kim second guesses her bold move. But then, Trini opens her eyes and looks at Kim, lids heavy and lips parted just enough to tempt Kim to dive back in, like she’s just woken from a dream. A particularly good one, if the blush on her cheeks is anything to go by.

“Miss Hart!” Principal Gandry shouts surprisingly close to them. “Have you forgotten Angel Grove’s strict no PDA policy, or did you just not feel it applied to you?”

Kim realizes belatedly that Trini still has her hands in her hair. She doesn’t look away as she answers the question that has been thrown at her. “Didn’t really seem relevant, Principal Gandry.”

“Well perhaps it will seem more relevant once you spend this Saturday morning in detention _thinking_  about it,” he bellows.

She shrugs, fingers gripping the solid warmth of Trini’s waist. Trini threads a handful of fingers through the short curls at the back of Kim’s head sending a shiver down her spine before cutting her eyes over Kim’s shoulder to where Mr. Gandry is presumably still glowering at them.

“What about me, Principal G?” Trini asks him.

The question must stun him if his momentary silence is anything to go by. “What about you, Miss Kwan?” he stutters.

“Do I get detention too?” she asks innocently. He splutters a little more, and if Kim wasn’t looking at Trini’s face she would probably be tempted to turn around and watch the principal of her high school short circuit before 8:30 in the morning. “Or is it just Kimberly, since she’s the one who kissed me?”

“I, I mean- I gue- _No_. Detention for the _both_  of you,” he finally declares. “This Saturday morning.”

“Oh, well in that case,” Trini shrugs and then leans back in claiming Kim’s lips with her own.

Vaguely, Kim is aware of Principal Gandry castigating them and Zack guffawing in the background. But then, Trini opens her mouth a little into the kiss and Kim forgets what planet they’re on all together. Not relevant, indeed.

\---

The whole school buzzes with gossip after that. It’s not every day that Kimberly Hart, Ex-Queen Bee, lays a Hollywood style mackdown on Trini Kwan, Resident Bad Girl, in front of the principal. Later, when Zack describes the exact shade of purple President Gandry colored, he will have to use several of Billy’s colored pencils. Kim will laugh so hard she starts coughing again, throat still a little raw from the past weekend. But Trini will be there, rubbing soothing circles on her back with the hand that had been twined in her own only moments before.

She's never been gladder to be a woman of her word.

**Author's Note:**

> (Except Kim is less glad when Trini winds up sick several days later. Thank god turnabout is fair play.)


End file.
